Playing for Bees
by transmigratory
Summary: They are both running from something, and always into each other. He's never had a friendship start with a kiss before, but college is full of changes he's not going to complain about. Maka/Soul College AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:** The quotation on top is from the poet Clementine von Radics. If you like poetry, I recommend all of his. I do not own Soul Eater (if I did, there'd be no boob madness). I wish I had had more time to work on this story but unfortunately life gets in the way of art all the time. I edited this story to the best of my ability but there may still be some errors in here which I apologize for tremendously. It is a simple story but I hope those who do read it enjoy it nonetheless. Thank you. :]

" _I will love you when you are a still day._

 _I will love you when you are a hurricane."_

It isn't the first day of autumn, but it feels like it.

The sky is stained with ashen clouds that aren't thick enough to cover all of the pinpricking stars overhead. Fragments of an eventide sky strike through the scudding gray, a raging swirl of orange and faded ocean blue. The wind sticks to his skin but chills his bones at their aching core.

He's glad he opted for his threadbare scarf as he trots after his uproarious roommate. He chirps nonstop about the party – the "legendary rager" – that they're about to "crash." Soul half-listens, picks up on "hot sorority chicks" and "bottomless kegs" but otherwise tunes out.

He focuses on how off-kilter it is to be away from home, away from high-class chatter and milling servants behind each swinging door. Instead, he is surrounded by blooming scholars his own age with no stifling curfew, or unbearable need to have near-flawless etiquette at oversized dinner tables that keep his family as far apart as he feels from them. He feels like he can breathe for the first time in years and the night air is so crisp. It cleans his lungs out and makes his spirit lighter. The world seems to change color, like the curling edges of the old leaves above them. This could be a good year as long as he can stay balanced and above the dark waters of his own mind.

His roommate leads him down a small side road just a few hundred feet from one of the vine-threaded campus buildings. A shoddy remix of an antiquated song spills out of an open door and grates Soul's ears. He swallows a deep breath to calm his nerves, which fray like old ribbon at the sounds that swell in the house they enter.

Three boys near-knock him over on their way out of the crooked door. Beer they splashed mid-altercation stings his skin and leaves a yeasty scent behind. He crinkles his nose as he stands behind his roommate in the keg line.

"Black Star," he groans as he observes all of the steroid-stuffed jocks, "this is nothing like you said it would be."

"Aw, come on," he replies with a froth-rimmed mouth, "give it more than five seconds before you skip out on me, bro."

"I'm gonna regret this," he mumbles as he watches his roommate attempt to converse with an ebony-haired girl two times his height. The beer spirals into his stomach like a lukewarm poison. It tastes like it has been aging in the basement for years, a bit like sprinkled dust and mold. It wouldn't surprise him if the keg _had_ been rotting away downstairs for months. This is a frat house through and through: from the signed sports jerseys hanging on the walls to the lace thong draped on the ceiling fan.

With Black Star ensconced and enchanted by the sophomore sorority girl, he sneaks outside to soak in some more cool, fall-brushed breezes. The porch boards creak like ancient tree limbs underfoot, and his heart leaps into his throat for a moment when he steps over a rusted nail jutting far out from the foundation. He wonders how the building even stays intact, especially when the alleged DJ cranks up the volume on his weak playlist and the house shudders in fear.

Soul places his red solo cup on the banister and looks out. All the houses on the street are well-lit and alive, even as midnight falls.

He jumps when he hears the screen door screech open. He turns a perplexed sanguine stare onto the stranger, a dishwater-blonde girl half his size. She throws him a calming, semi-shy smile and moves to stand beside him.

"Sorry if I scared you," she says.

"It's fine. You're too small for me to feel threatened, anyway." He grins.

She glares, her green eyes thrumming with unhindered irritation. "I'm tiny, but I bet you five dollars I could kick your ass."

He laughs. "I actually bet you could."

Her smile reaches her eyes this time, and she holds out her hand for him to shake. "Maka."

He shakes it with a weak grip, afraid her hand is as fragile as it looks in his own. "Soul."

A group of guys hustle down the sidewalk toward the party, all raucous laughter and playful shoves.

He watches her eyes widen in the dim light. She turns to him, gaze pleading and jolted. "I need you to do me a favor. You can say no, though," she murmurs.

The group approaches, rapid and already drunk.

"What is it?" He leans closer the quieter she gets. Their noses near-touch. A small hint of vanilla drifts from her skin.

"One of those guys is my douchebag ex. Think you can kiss me quick while he walks by?"

His heart hammers against his ribs – so hard it is like it is trying to break through - and he licks his dry lips. He can feel his body shaking a bit, but he surprises himself – and possibly this beautiful half-stranger – and slides his hand over one of her cheeks and moves in to kiss her as if he already has a hundred times before. As if this is natural between them, these two people who just met under an hour ago.

She leans against his hand as he kisses her. And it does feel natural. It feels like the whole world falls into place in this piece of time. Like things in the universe shifted around them to make this work; like souls melding and lining up.

After he hears them slam their way into the party, he opens his eyes and breaks the kiss. Her cheeks are as red as his, her viridian eyes luminescent. He's not the best kisser, but she makes it easy. And he's relieved she looks like she enjoyed it as much as he did.

He clears his throat. "Hope that helped," he says to absolve the lingering tension.

"Yeah," she replies, a grin forming. "I think it did. That was pretty convincing I'm sure."

"Not sure if he saw, though. My eyes were closed."

The smile swings through. "My eyes were closed, too. So I don't know. Certainly made this shitty party a bit more fun. Thanks, Soul."

"My pleasure." He smiles back. He likes the way the way she whispers his name, the way she laughs. She's making all of this way too easy for him.

"Maybe I'll see you around campus?" she asks, and she rocks on her heels a bit.

"I hope so," he says before he can restrain himself.

"Me too." She throws him one last smile before she goes back inside.

He watches a few red-sullied leaves flutter to the ground and pulls his scarf tighter. The air is so different here.

He could get used to it.


	2. Chapter 2

He still cannot sleep even hundreds of miles away from home.

Anxiety – sharp as the edges of broken glass – slices through the surface and causes him to toss and turn so much he starts to get dizzy. His roommate's bear-like snoring also isn't much of a lullaby. He sneaks out the door just as the neon green alarm clock slides into two AM.

The light scent of cinnamon hits him as he heads toward the communal basement. He strolls past the series of tattered green coaches and pool tables and peeks into the kitchen. The smell swathes him as he turns the corner. It's a homey smell, he thinks, unlike the kinds he's known before; it is warm and dusted in brown sugar. It is comforting, and soft-edged and sweet.

Maka stands alone by the marble counter, her eyes intense on the aged recipe like it is written in a code.

Afraid to disturb her concentration, he stands by for a moment and observes until she has finished with the cream of tartar.

"Are you a nerd about everything that you do?" he says when it seems like it is safe to break the fragile silence.

She still jumps the slightest bit at the sound of his voice. She crosses her arms, but he sees a small hint of a smile forming. "If 'nerd' means focused then yes, I get this enthused about basically everything that I do. Now come help me finish." She shoves the bowl in his direction as she starts to roll tiny balls from the mix.

"Why are you awake so late on a school night?" he asks as he struggles to work with the dough.

"Well," she starts, "my mom and I always used to stay up late the night before the first day of school and bake. I just never kicked the habit, even though I haven't seen her since sophomore year of high school. It just calms me, I guess." She slides the rusted rack into the oven, which groans and struggles to life. "Why are you awake?"

"I'm always awake." He shrugs.

"Are you an artistic soul?" She leans against the counter and looks up into his flustered face. They gravitated toward each other without warning over the last few minutes.

"I guess you could say I'm artistic, and my name _is_ Soul," he mumbles. His fingers twitch and he remembers the feeling of cool porcelain beneath them, staccato, dark rhythms from the back of his mind like bruised music – his favorite sort of sound.

He realizes how much shorter she is as they stand close in the quiet room. She has a small coating of powdered sugar on her nose and without thought he thumbs it off. Some of it flakes onto her lips, and for a moment he cannot look away. He has flashes of the night they met – of summery kisses and cheap beer – and hears a different tune in the back of his head, lighter than before. He breaks the tension after he abruptly pinches her nose.

She takes a few handfuls of flour and tosses it with a laugh, and it falls graceful over him like snow. He scoops some of the remnants at his socked feet and chucks it back in her direction. They go back and forth until the kitchen is as white as his hair and the oven screeches to indicate the snickerdoodles are finally ready, though he had forgotten they were there at all.

Maka slides them out and moves to sit beside him on the checkered – and heavily powdered - floor. She offers one to him and he grabs it, though it near-crumbles in his hand. They both take a bite at the same time. It is so sweet he swears he can feel cavities forming but it's worth it. He likes the taste of something homemade, especially from an old recipe that carries its weight through the years.

He turns when he hears her laugh. "You look like a ghost," she says. "You're literally _all_ white."

He reaches over to pinch her nose again and she swats him away.

"You realize we have to clean all this, right?" She sighs. "And my first class is an eight AM."

He grins. "Yeah. My first class is also an eight AM. Being a freshman doesn't seem to have too many perks."

"Hmm. I think it was worth it." She takes another bite. "This is the best batch I've ever made."

"Tell yourself it was worth it when your alarm clock goes off."

"I'll have these for breakfast to remind myself why it was a good idea." Her eyes have an unfamiliar light when she grins, but a comforting one. There is an effervescence in her eyes that he's never quite witnessed – spring days and sunshine and bottomless viridian. It's unknown, but not the scary sort. He feels himself drawn to it. This is not trapped-in-a-dark-room anxiety, but the jump-before-the-fall kind of rush.

"I'll hold the dustpan and you sweep," he says. He tugs a pigtail.

"I figured you might be lazy."

"Not lazy, _artistic._ "

She laughs full force and then leans back, eyes closed. They listen to summer's-end crickets in the bushes outside the open kitchen window, and embrace the last pieces of humidity that seep through the screen mesh.

She throws him a broom and grabs her own. "Your first college project. Aren't you glad I was your partner?"

"Couldn't have asked for anyone cooler."

* * *

She wonders why it is that they keep running into each other. She doesn't believe in fate, but running into the same snow-haired, shark-toothed boy over and over may bend her mind in that direction.

She plops down next to him at the lab table and throws him a quick grin. "Fancy meeting you in an eight AM ecology class."

"I wanted to get my lab over with." He scrunches his nose. "I hate science. It's my worst subject."

"I'm going to be a biology teacher, actually, so let me know if you need me to help you out." She opens her notebook and jots down the date.

He opens the book and sweeps through the first few chapters. She gets flickers of detailed drawings of dragonflies and swamp biospheres. "I might be a lost cause, honestly."

"No one is a lost cause, Soul. Not with the right teacher. And it would help me out because I can't afford the book right now."

"This thing new was eight hundred bucks. And I won't even be able to sell it back. What a scam." He leans back in the chair with so much force she swears he's about to fall off. "But I don't mind sharing."

"I'm working on finding a job, I swear. I'll help you and pay you for half when I have the money."

"Nah, it's fine. Just don't get impatient with me when I ask the same question over and over. And one more thing?"

"What?" she whispers as the professor makes his way to the front of their crowded class.

"Come get breakfast with me after. I'm starving." His grin is crooked, but sweet.

She slides him a Ziploc bag of snickerdoodles. "I'm sure these will tide you over until then."

She loses herself in the lecture once it starts, energized by the talks of how something as simple as tree-moss goes a long way in an environment. She always feels a bit small in the grand scheme of things, but knowing how essential fungus is makes her feel more at ease. She thinks she hears Soul snoring at one point but ignores it and deliberates over her stream of notes.

She turns to him once she starts to hear the telltale end-of-class signs – the zipped backpacks and binders snapping shut in unison – and gives him a hard punch in the shoulder to jolt him to life again.

This time, he falls from the chair. Luckily, the professor is long gone.

She kneels by his side with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Thought I'd lost you to boredom."

"So to resuscitate me you try to kill me?" he groans as he rubs a forming bump on his head.

Maka holds out her hand to help him up. "Breakfast is on me."

He glares from beneath sideways bangs, but takes her hand and removes himself from the cold floor. "You're a scary bookworm."

"I am when I have to be." She laughs when she sees the dried-up drool on his face.

He rolls his eyes and leads the way to the café a few buildings over.

A few of the trees thriving by the library pelt them with decaying leaves. She looks up as they meander forward, and marvels at the way they're starting to turn into a gold like that of new coins. A few are a deep red that remind her of her new friend's unusual eyes. She's glad she decided to travel to as far as she did for school instead of another dull autumn in the deserts of Nevada.

"Soul," she starts, "where are you from?"

He hesitates for a moment, then, "New York City."

"Do you guys have leaves like this?"

He stays quiet for a moment, thinking. "Yeah. Central Park gets kind of pretty. But out here it's like a painting, huh? You can feel it changing out here."

"I'm from Death City, Nevada, so we don't have anything like this." She speeds her pace to catch up with him. His hunger is propelling him faster than normal. "Besides the little flowers that spring from the cacti."

"Sounds kind of boring, to be honest." He shifts his oversized book from one arm to the other. "I could never live in a place like that."

"You get used to it," she says as she continues to look up, "but this is a nice break."

They enter the cafeteria and are wreathed in the scent of new-baked muffins and surrounded by the sound of many ebbing conversations in the booths nearby.

When they reconvene to pick a seat, she's got one scone and a black coffee and he has two beef tacos, a bowl of lucky charms, and a bottle of Mountain Dew.

She blanches in an instant. "Is this a normal breakfast for you?"

"Yeah," he says over a mouthful of lettuce, "is there something wrong with it?"

"I mean when you said breakfast I imagined… a bagel or something? Not tacos?" She picks at her scone. "And you're so thin… I'm amazed."

He shrugs. "Tacos are good no matter what time of the day it is, you know. Especially with the crunchy shell."

"You are literally so weird."

"You're fascinated, though." He takes a spoonful of marshmallows from his bowl.

"Because I've never seen it before in my life."

"Welcome to New England, desert-dweller. Everything you knew before is on a whole new level here."

She pushes her breakfast aside. Her appetite dissipated with each swig of his slime-like drink. "You're not even from here. Stop making up excuses for your horrendous diet."

"Never."

* * *

They meet again later at a mandated floor party put on by their odd RA. She finds him by a giant bowl of some sort of sherbert, which is green and which she assumes is blended with some variation of Mountain Dew, as if he needs any more of it in his system.

She opts for a bottle of water, which stands in a row of eight and is replaced immediately. She steps away in a subtle manner from the RA, who looked like he was offended by her drink selection and leers at her from the corner of the room.

She sidles up to Soul and whispers, though she is certain he can hear and see everything happening around them. "Is our resident assistant… okay?"

"I think he has some sort of OCD. Every time someone grabs a drink or snack he fills the empty spot again within seconds. It's actually sort of nerve-wracking."

"That must be why everyone looks so uncomfortable."

"Probably." He peeks over her shoulder. "No roommate?"

Maka laughs. "She's already asleep, actually."

"Yikes. Someone nerdier than you? I can't even believe it."

She shoves him. "Where's your roommate?"

"That's Black Star, my wonderful bunk-buddy." He gestures behind him to a blue-haired boy igniting havoc by the snack table. He fingers a bag of cheez-its and leaves it at an uncouth angle, which causes the RA to reveal himself again from the shadows to repair the supposed snack aesthetic. Black Star proceeds to do it over and over until he gets kicked out. Some of the other students clap as he makes his way raucously out of the hall and back into his room. She hears the sound of a video game in the distance just minutes later.

"Seems like quite the character," she says around another sip of water.

"He is. We actually met in New York years ago so I'm used to it, but I apologize in advance for any offensive behavior in the future. He will find your weakness and exploit it until you want to strangle him."

She smiles. "Are you implying I'm good enough of a friend already to drop by your room from time to time?"

"That and I already have a question on our ecology homework."

"Only one question?"

"Okay. Actually, a lot of questions. You got time?"

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

* * *

A few weeks into the semester the air gets keen and leaves trails of goosebumps on his skin as he steps outside. A quarter of the trees are now near-bare and it saddens him a bit to see the colors crunched underfoot instead of overhead. He shudders even in his thick coat and scarf. He turns around to check on his sluggish partner, who has a few more layers on than him.

"It's so cold," she mumbles as she trails behind him.

"Just wait till the winter."

"I'll be gone by then."

"No way. You have to finish this awful class with me."

"It's not awful. You're just an awful student."

"No such thing as a lost cause, Maka."

She groans and runs to get ahead of him. He meets her by the rippling waters of the local swamp. He cannot even see the water beneath the thick raiment of algae and lifeless leaves. It is wearing more layers than the both of them combined and he wonders how they are supposed to extract a hearty sample without falling in.

Before he can even inquire, she's angled over the water and scooping some semi-clear liquid into their mason jar. He grabs the collar of her peacoat to keep her from ending up in the scum, a dark swamp likely crawling with ancient snapping turtles and swelling leeches.

He cringes when she holds out the jar for them to both look. There are some almost-microscopic critters slicing through the dusted water.

"This is what your 'breakfast' looks like in your stomach," she says.

"How am I the weird one when you're always saying stuff like that?"

She shrugs. "Now we just have to get an ocean sample. I don't know how to get to a beach, though, beside taxi. I don't have a car."

"My roommate has an illegally-parked car we can borrow at the risk of our lives." He jingles the keys in his pocket.

"Higher education is so worth it. Lead the way." She holds the jar as if it's irreplaceable and not brimming with poisonous creatures and mud-stained swamp water. She really does commit to every project she starts. And lately, he's just along for the ride.

"It's going to be dark by the time we get there, though. That's what I hate about this time of year," he mumbles as they shuffle toward an apartment building's oversized parking lot.

They enter in the closest beach's address and he starts the hour-long drive in an old green Tercel that has seen more accidents than road time. The radio catches more static than song but they agree for a 90's rock station after a few minor disagreements. He can feel a coil trying to break free from the leather in his seat but ignores it.

She falls asleep right before they arrive. He almost doesn't want to wake her but realizes she'd probably like the view. Some frosted stars spring to life from the obsidian sky. She grabs his hand as they make their way over a few collapsing dunes.

Nothing prepares him for her reaction to the sight of the beach on that autumnal night. Her sea-glass eyes glow as she reaches the foaming water's edge. She holds out her arms, closes her eyes and breathes in the salted air with a smile as faint but as strong as the late-blooming stars. He almost wishes he could take a picture but restrains himself; and he's certain that the beauty of the image will carry its strength in his mind for years. It's stuck in his memory.

"This is heaven," she murmurs as he moves to stand beside her.

"Yeah," he asserts as he looks out into the cold distance, "it really is."

She takes the empty jar from him and moves to scoop the water into it. This sample is refreshing as she holds it out: clear and undisturbed aside from a few shards of shell.

* * *

Mid-terms are a lot more work than he thought they would be. Maka has been helping him all semester with ecology and he's keeping his head above water in that department, but two of his other classes signal impending doom for his grades very early in his college career. He can't risk returning home just yet; not now, in a place where he's finally making some positive headway.

He makes his way to the basement because the nights now are too cold for comfortable walks. He slouches on an old chair and watches television, though it's a lot like white noise as his anxiety levels start to amplify.

Panic attacks always make him feel like he's dying. Like his spirit is being choked by his body, like it needs to get out but can't. The ground could swallow him up now and he wouldn't even notice. His chest tightens and things go black and speckled at the edges of his vision. He curls up. Music used to free him from this but he's too far from his piano, too far from the few balms he had at home. He closes his eyes and waits for it to pass like a riptide through his bones.

"Soul?"

There's a tiny voice calling for him somewhere in the distance but he ignores it. It is probably just some figment of his temporary insanity even if it seems soothing.

But he bursts back into full consciousness when he feels himself pulled into someone's lap. Her skin is warmer than normal, he thinks, because his own world is so chilly. She always has a smell somewhere between cinnamon and vanilla and he closes his eyes as she runs a hand through his hair, over and over.

"I used to have anxiety attacks constantly after mama left, and papa was never home," she says, close to his ear. "It's one of the worst feelings in the world, I think."

He's embarrassed beyond belief but he says nothing, just listens to her ramble on and on about little things: how she finished a Shakespeare essay today and her professor was pissed it was only about Cordelia, how she wishes she could tape the red leaves back on the branches of trees, how she left the jars of water on her windowsill and how they're starting to change in a new environment.

"And it always hits you so suddenly. Going to war with yourself sucks. But keep fighting it. There's no other way out except to wake up and keep going. You find things to live for in the strangest places but it happens almost every single day. And then they just start to go away."

She found him, he thinks. And she's one of the reasons he wants to keep going.

He drifts asleep to the sound of her voice.

* * *

She shows up at his dorm room door on Halloween night, despite his best efforts to avoid human interaction. Black Star left to some party hours ago, dressed as Donatello. He is irritated from all the drunken shouting outside of his window, the abrupt drop in temperature, and the inability to be left alone.

He hates Halloween, even though she looks oddly stunning in a bee outfit. A _sexy_ bee outfit. Knee high black boots and a black mini skirt hug all of her curves, and a striped crop top exposes her toned midriff. He hates his mood swings now more than ever. He resents, too, that she saw him at one of his worst moments and still treats him the same, as if she didn't see him being swallowed up by his own mind that night in the basement. They're getting too close. He tried to circumnavigate her since then but they always find strange ways to gravitate back to each other. He doesn't know how to wriggle himself from her grasp except to do what he does best: to turn away.

He's always fighting himself. He wants to stay and leave all at once. She gives off a light he doesn't feel like he deserves to bask in.

"Want to come to a party with me?" She grins and he near-cringes.

"Nah. Too much homework," he mumbles, hand fiddling with the loosened brass door knob.

"Mid-terms are over. Give yourself a break. I even have a beekeeper outfit." She reaches for his hand, gentle and slow, but he doesn't accept it.

"Not interested," he snaps. Soul feels it deep: his blood boils against his will – like it's turning black; like his whole body is gaining sharp edges. "Nice costume. Almost makes up for your lack of tits."

Maka Albarn is a girl who cannot keep her composure when it comes to emotions, and in this moment he loathes watching her heart break right there on her sleeve. Even her fake wings look like they begin to wilt. The glow in her green eyes is consumed by the tears that bloom, and her hands form into weak fists. And he's the one responsible. He's stolen her color.

He wishes she would react like she normally does to discourtesy: with shouting, with sharp-minded retorts and with a simple brush-off. But she doesn't and he knows why: because she considered him a friend, because this sort of comment was never supposed to come from him, but from barbaric frat boys and bullies. She's silent - completely silent - as they stand there and stare at each other over his threshold. She doesn't even muster a glare, doesn't respond.

She just turns on her heels and stomps down the hallway and out the door, disappears like a shadow into the crowds of costumed students on the street.

He doesn't bother closing the door.

* * *

He doesn't see her for two weeks following "the incident."

He sees her in class, but he feels like he's a ghost. She does everything but walk right through him: ignores greetings, texts, and faint apologies. He knows he deserves it, but he feels her vacancy like an open gash to his heart. He drags his feet more than usual. His roommate threatens to kick him out until he patches it up, and he knows with Black Star that nothing is ever an empty threat.

He decides to attempt being creative, and tries to work his way to Maka through her unnaturally demure roommate.

The temperature change is as abrupt as always: seventy to thirty degrees in a matter of days, sometimes hours. Leaves fall in heavier groups as if they can no longer stand the cold winds, much like desert-dwellers.

He takes a deep breath right before he knocks on her door.

She opens it clad in puppy-slippers, pigtails loose and untamed.

He refrains from any potential teasing. This is fragile ground that he treads on now.

She gives him a once-over, crosses her arms, and stays mute. He isn't sure how to move any further onto this thin ice. He can almost hear it cracking with the unspoken tension between them.

He clears his throat, lets his gaze drift to his feet. "I brought tea," he says, his voice weathered at the edges. "Lemon-ginger with honey."

"Organic?" she asks and he near-jumps out of his own skin. It is like he hasn't heard her voice in years and she sounds shaky, congested. Tsubaki may have mentioned once or twice that she was getting over a rough cold. Her small nose is red, her lips faintly chapped, and her breathing lightly labored. Her trash by her desk is filled to the brim with used tissues, and a humidifier hums in the background.

"What?" he asks.

"Where's the honey from?" Her glare is as lethal as a dagger to the gut.

"A beekeeper at the farmer's maket," he mumbles, the fear rising.

She takes the mug and breathes in the steam with a weak smile. "Thanks. How did you know my favorite kind of tea?" There is a small undercurrent of suspicion in her tone.

Soul points to Tsubaki's side of the room, empty now.

"You really did your research to get back into my good graces, huh?" She takes a long sip and leaves her critical, viridian stare heavy on him.

"Look, Maka, I'm really sorry," he replies, surprisingly loud and clear. No wavering, no doubt. "I was having a moment, but I'm not excusing it. I was a total asshole and you didn't deserve that from me."

She stays quiet for a moment, then opens the door wider. "Well, at risk of your health, come on in."

He cowers. "That's… it?"

She shrugs. "You meant it. That's really all I needed to hear. And honestly, I missed you. A little."

He releases a sigh of relief. "Me too."

Maka crawls into her bed and he slides next to her while she scrolls through her recommended Netflix list. "Don't say anything about the slippers."

"Wanted to – desperately – but I won't."

She grins.

"Why'd you decide to be a bee for Halloween?" he asks after a long, now comfortable, silence.

She tightens a pigtail, and her smile loses some of its color. "My mother taught me how to beekeep," she says. "I've always been enamored with bees. I'm determined to have a beekeeping club on campus next year when I'm allowed to form a group." She pauses and appears deep in thought, her eyes clouded. "It was the one thing my mom left me with and I refuse to let go."

"Will you teach me?"

"Oh, I already plan on it. I need a vice president. It's going to be your way to repent."

He grins and leans his head on hers. She has the faint scent of cough drops and honey but beneath it all is the lingering smell of cactus flowers, of drifting sand and moonlight. It is so easy to be in her presence for him.

He refuses to mess it up again.

* * *

The halls are eerie on Thanksgiving. He's not sure why he decided to stay when his parents offered him a free ticket home, but he thinks about his ebony piano ensconced by red-ribbon curtains and ignores the anxious fog forming in his wild mind.

He stops near Maka's door when he hears the faint sound of a Top 40 station. He dares a light knock and within a few seconds, she's opened the door. She's dressed in what seems like six layers, topped with two scarves.

He raises an eyebrow.

"My heater broke and no maintenance people will be here till Saturday," she murmurs from beneath the infinity fabric.

"You could have called me."

"I figured you would be home, honestly."

He leans on the door. "Why aren't you?"

"Couldn't afford it. Even if I could, my dad was going to drag me to his new girlfriend's house and I wasn't in the mood to deal with it. He has a new one every year and each one is a worse cook than the last. It's bizarre."

"Where is Tsubaki?"

"She went home with her… sort-of boyfriend."

"The church is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner if you'd like to join me."

She smiles. "Sure."

Soul only throws on one layer and meets her at the dorm entrance. She is still swaddled in two scarves and two coats and he stifles laughter.

She glares. "What?"

"You just… look like the Michelin man."

She shrugs. "Whatever. It's cold outside."

"It's almost sixty-five degrees."

"Yeah. Cold."

He rolls his eyes and follows her out the door. Mounds of leaves crinkle and crunch underfoot, all hints of green and golden color long faded. They sit like remnants of regaled artwork after a fire: brown, dusted and tattered. He kicks a few of them as they go along, but they tear instantly instead of floating free in the light breeze. He dreads the snow-coat they'll obtain in a few weeks' time.

He catches an inquisitive glance from her and is relieved to see she never loses the emerald vibrancy in her eyes, even in the building frost.

There aren't many other students here. Soul spots Kid at one end of the table with two lithe blondes at his side, his fingers steepled and his honey-hued gaze focused as always. Priest Law sits at the other end, an enormous feast between them that could feed the entire group five times over. His headphones remain in his ears, though Soul hears no music from them as they sit together just a chair away.

"Welcome all," he says as they all turn their attention on him. "Who would like to lead us in prayer today?"

Kid rises from his chair so quick that he near-knocks it over. "I will. Patty, Liz?" He turns to the girls and they stand behind him.

Maka and Soul exchange a quick look as Kid puts his hands together and begins a spiel about how thankful he is for the number eight, for the absolute symmetry of the size of the turkey legs, and the straight A's he has maintained so far.

"And I am thankful to Liz for gaining a cup size this year, therefore finally matching Patty-"

Priest Law clears his throat, and they all sit to cheers with glasses of sparkling apple cider.

After the finish eating, he watches as Maka engages in conversation easily with the two girls, who inform her that they were taken in by Kid and his father in middle school and have been inseparable ever since. He watches as Maka laughs over and over at some lousy joke Patty has said, her hand tightening around her third glass of cider.

His heart squeezes, and he wonders for the umpteenth time why it is that even the small things she does gets to him. Her laugh, the way she scrunches her nose in distaste at her new friend's story about a disastrous date.

Kid sits beside him, much to his shock. "Question for you, Soul."

"Shoot."

"Are you and Maka…" He tenses, as if he cannot find the right words in his enormous mind. "Dating?"

Soul clears his throat, his cheeks red. "No. We're just friends."

"Ah. I see. You just… seem close."

"We actually just met this year."

"Interesting." He always is in his science mode and it unsettles Soul.

"Did you… Are you interested in Maka…?" He pulls at the color of his peacoat.

"Oh! No. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't implicate that. I was just wondering. I actually do not pursue romantic relationships. The only time I ever get romantically involved with anyone is when I have to pay a visit to an ex or two of Liz's. She's actually _over_ -romantic." There is an affection in his eyes that Soul rarely sees; he has a deep love for his adopted sisters and it shows in these tiny moments and he cannot help but smile. "They drive me nuts but at the end of the day, I would be nothing without them in my life."

Soul looks to Maka again, who is laughing once more while her pigtail is being pulled by Patty. He somehow already knows the feeling.

* * *

The rain comes down in sheets as she runs from her class back to her dorm, her new chemistry notes tucked deep into her fluorescent pink raincoat. She treats all of her notes like national treasures, and these are for upcoming finals and have gained a whole new level of fragility. She cannot even let one ounce of punctuation run down the pages.

She rips off her hood after she passes the threshold and takes in a deep breath. She thought her ribs might have cracked from the pressure of her cross-campus trek. Her rainboots squeak in the checkered halls, and she leaves a slug-trail of water and mud behind her. She's glad she bought a whole roll of paper towels yesterday.

Maka hovers by her door with her hand on her keycard. She stops short when she hears a consistent bedspring creak and something like a muffled scream.

"Shit," she mouths, her face reddened from more than just the blistering cold. She near-bolts to Soul's door, drenched pigtails flying. _Six o' clock on a Tuesday,_ she thinks. _This is insane._

He opens the door with one swift, curious glance at her outfit. "Why are you always dressed like a goon when you arrive at my door?"

"Because I am always finding myself in weird situations that I have no way out of," she retorts.

"Okay?"

"My roommate is… _busy_ with her boyfriend." She clears her throat, afraid to say any of the words aloud.

"What?"

She thinks middle school metaphors might work best for him. She makes a circle with her index finger and thumb, and pushes her other index through the opening, back and forth until realization dawns on him and his eyes widen.

Soul opens the door wider, his face as red as hers. "Oh. Sorry. Come on in."

She shuffles not too far in the room, afraid to saturate his old-wooden floor.

He hesitates, then says, "I have some shirts and sweatpants you can borrow if you'll be more comfortable." He scratches the back of his neck, strangely uncomfortable.

"Um, yeah, that would be great." She places her notes on his desk, and takes the clothes from him.

"You can just throw your other stuff on the heater I guess."

He turns around and she changes within what seems like seconds to him. He listens for a moment as her raincoat drips a puddle onto the floor.

He is taller than her, but she didn't figure too tall. The pajamas are two times her size, but comfortable. The material is worn down by the years of use but still a strong fleece compared to her own sleepwear. The shirt smells like his faded cologne, and she smiles a bit. It reminds her of sandalwood and pine.

"What's with the strange face? Do they smell?" he asks.

"No! Sorry. I was distracted." She grins. "They're so warm. Huge on me, though."

"You can have them if you want. I know you're defenseless in the cold and I have a few more pairs like that."

"I don't know. They look ridiculous on me."

"Nah, they're cute."

The tension is momentary, but thick enough to be palpable in the tepid air between them. She cannot count the amount of times today that both of their faces have turn crimson enough to compete with the layers in his eyes. Their awkward encounters appear to be increasing over time, and she can't decipher the meanings. She turns away and runs a finger along one of the sentences on her unattended notes.

"Well," he says after a while, "I'm going to finish _Luke Cage._ I'll leave you to your nerding."

"Don't you have something to study for? Finals are in two weeks."

"I have plenty to study for. I'll do it when the time is right." He crawls into his bed, so matter-of-fact.

"I don't know how you're going to pass."

"I always find a way."

She rolls her eyes and sits, zoning out a little as the pages roll on. She nibbles on the end of her mechanical pencil, thoughts swirling like a weak torrent in her head. She's so tired of the equations. She swears she dreams about them.

"I kind of wonder what sex is like," she says, sudden and unwarranted. She puts her face in her hands after he spits out his drink, just narrowly missing his laptop.

She can't read his expression too well, or his violent reaction. He sits in silence for a few heartbeats before he replies, "I wouldn't know. Sorry."

Maka's gaze drifts out the window. She hates how dark it gets here this early in the day. She already is eager to see the beginnings of spring, of growing sunshine. "I dated a few people in high school but I was always more interested in my books than making out, I guess." She lays her head down on her notes and dares a glance in his bewildered direction.

"I'm sure it's not that spectacular." He chuckles, nervous.

"It probably is with the right person, you know?"

"Why is this even a discussion?"

"Oh. Sorry. I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable! I was just… My mind was just all over the place and it kind of came out. Maybe I just feel too close to you or something." She smiles, bashful.

"It's okay. I'm not uncomfortable."

"You seem it."

"It's hard to explain."

"Try."

He runs both his hands through his hair and sighs. "I just can't."

She glares.

"Look," he says, "I just can't. Trust me."

"I wonder if anyone has thought about it… with me."

He spits out another sip of his drink.

"I'd be flattered," she continues, ignoring his second exaggerated response to her line of questioning.

"Well, I think there are some guys that think about it that wouldn't make you feel flattered. Lots of scumbags out here." He sinks further into his pillow.

"True. Guys suck." She throws her focus back to the slow-crawling rain on his window. "You're actually one of the only guys I don't hate. They're so gross."

He keeps his mouth shut firmly. No need to spill the truth and ruin the esteem she holds him in. He's thought about it more than once since he's met her. He thought about it the first time he saw the pale smattering of freckles on her nose, a sun-tinted constellation only visible from inches away. He thought about it when he drunkenly ran his fingers through her hair a few nights ago. He thought about it the last time he saw her bite her lip at lunch while she thought about something far beyond his reach. He thought about it just an hour ago when she put on his clothes. He doesn't have the right to even imagine her that way, but he can't stop it.

He considers walking outside and throwing himself into a puddle to drown.

She respects him without even knowing the hidden darkness.

"Soul?" she asks. Her voice is so soft, so understanding.

"It's complicated," he says, and that ends it.

* * *

He's awakened by a faint knock in the middle of the night. He groans and rolls over to read his clock: 4 A.M. There is a temporary nervousness that flits through him. He doesn't remember the last time he had a good wake-up call past midnight. He trudges to the door and finds Maka on the other side - rolling suitcase behind her - bundled up in more layers than necessary as usual.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"Yeah. I have an early flight home for winter break and I just wanted to say goodbye since we're not going to see each other for a month. Technically, we're not going to meet until next year." Her eyes are reddened at the edges. She's a morning person only to a certain degree. Her hair is still soaked from her shower, and he catches the small hint of vanilla and cinnamon from her that he's grown to be familiar with. "I didn't mean to wake you like that. Sorry."

"It's okay. I would have been offended if you hadn't stopped by, honestly." He fiddles with the collar of his night-shirt.

A loud snore erupts in the background and they both laugh.

"He could sleep through a windstorm, huh?" she asks, her eyes glittering like the strings of lights around them.

"Oh, absolutely. Kid and I tried to wake up him up the other night with a whole bunch of methods and none of it worked. Even pots and pans and heavy metal. It's his superpower."

"I would say it's more of a kryptonite." She grins. "How did your finals go?"

"Good. Especially ecology, which I have you to thank for." There is a faint shade of rose on his cheeks, so he's relieved for the cover of the night.

"Did you decide to take ecology II?"

"No. Too much work." He reaches out and pinches her nose. "But I'm considering the wildlife preservation class you suggested next fall."

"Okay." She bats his hand away. "Well, I have to get going. Enjoy the holidays. Catch you next semester."

"Travel safe," he mumbles.

"You have my number if you need it," she says. She shocks him and pulls him in for a warm hug. It is over in the blink of an eye but he has collywobbles that might last through into next year. He's so weak, and it only grows worse the more time he spends with her. He's not even sure the break will cause it to wane.

"Thanks. Merry Christmas, Maka."

"Merry Christmas, Soul."

She throws him one last sugarcoated smile and then makes her way out the door.

* * *

She already drags him outside just a few days after winter break has ended. It is only late January, but the world is already white. Pure, immaculate alabaster all around them. The snowstorm the night before is like a cold, powdered sheath. The only contrast is the bright pink of her rainboots in the snow as they make their way across campus, and the everlasting emerald hue of her mischievous gaze as she turns every now and then to check up on him.

There is always an eerie but comforting silence after a blizzard. All he hears is her feet and his falling just a few steps behind. No cars are on the unplowed, iced roads. The streetlights are covered and don't cast much light on their path. Even the other students gathering to have snowball fights around them make barely a noise. It is like they are in a snowglobe; every movement is muffled by the thick coating. He breathes it in, and breathes out in frost and mist between his serrated teeth.

She grabs them two trays at the cafeteria and starts to run toward the hill of the other freshman dorm. He cannot keep up as well as she can, but they meet at the top.

"You ready?" she asks. Her smile is so wide, so full of mirth and wonder.

He figures this is her first snow. He's kind of selfishly glad to be a part of it with her, even as he feels the tips of his fingers go numb in his threadbare gloves. "Yeah, yeah. Let's go."

They push off at the same time, but crash halfway down the hill.

They roll to the bottom of the hill, clinging to each other and laughing, the trays long gone to the realm of the mounds of snow in the tennis courts beyond.

They lay there for a moment, catching their breath. Maka plays with the end of their scarves, which intertwine between them, a mesh of plaid and ocean blue. She turns to meet his eyes, smiling. Her nose and cheek are a brutal shade of sanguine.

"Can we do this after every snowstorm? Please?" she asks.

"Yeah, only if we successfully make it down the hill next time. Klutz."

"What? That was your fault!"

"Absolutely not."

"Let's go down again. I'll show you how good I am at it."

And as always, he obliges.

* * *

Winter fades as quick as it arrived. She swears it was a dream she had – those four months of frost-nipped skin, of soaked-to-the-bone clothes and movie nights huddled as close to the heater as possible with her self-declared best friend Soul. She'll miss the excuse to crawl under his covers, but settles for the clean, warm air and the strings of dew-drop pearls that form on the unraveled leaves.

But, the springs here are stranger than she'd ever imagined. The skies were clear and bursting with sunlight as she left her lab, but after a ten minute walk are a thunderous shade of ashen-black. Maka runs and ducks into the nearest building and makes her way down the ancient stairs to the basement of the campus center, her paper clutched firm to her chest. She stops and listens for a moment as the sheets of April rain beat against the door.

She walks slow and cautious by the orchestra classroom – where she hears some poorly-harmonized Beethoven. She passes the cello class just as reverently, but halts at the sound of a lone piano in the next class over.

She drinks in the song, like the first breath of frostless air she took in just a week ago. It is obsidian in sound but so enchanting. She's trapped until the student stops. She dares a quick peek into the room and sees Soul furiously scribbling down a new line of notes.

She steps in just as precariously as she had moved through the hallway just minutes before. He jumps a little when she slides onto the bench next to him, a faint smile on her face.

"You really remind me of the Phantom of the Opera sometimes," she says.

"Why is that?" he asks as he tinkers with a few more notes.

"You hide your talents."

"You were listening?"

"I was." She shoves him, lightly. "I always am."

"My final for this class is to compose a song." There is a waver to his voice she cannot comprehend.

"And?"

"It's not the music that scares me. It's the performance part."

She waits, her eyes on his.

"Well," he starts, "part of why my parents and I are disagreeing is because of my inability to perform in front of crowds. I screwed up at my tryout for Juliard and it cost me my entrance. My parents just continue to bring it up every chance they get. They always let me know how great my brother is doing and how I could be that great if only I tried."

Maka lets the heavy words settle between them. She places a hand on his, her smile still in place. "Your parents aren't saying it in quite the right way, but you do have talent and I don't think you should give up either just because of one mistake. We'd be missing a lot of beautiful things in this world if all the great artists had given up over one bump in the road. I think the music you make needs to be heard, but do it when you're ready." She tightens her grip. "But I have to be selfish and say that I'm glad you didn't get into Juliard."

"Why?"

"We wouldn't have met, and I'm so glad we did."

He grins and tugs at one of her pigtails. "You're so cheesy."

"I know."

"But I feel the same."

"I know."


	3. Chapter 3

They call each other a lot over the summer, though with their time differences, the connections can sometimes prove difficult.

"Hello?" he mumbles from a pulsating New York City, his voice raspy at the edges, old-sounding through the fragments of static. She can feel how much he resents being at home even thousands of miles away; every time he calls, he's asleep or soon-to-be. His voice is heavier, more tired. She wishes she could grab his hand through the phone.

"Sorry," she whispers back, "did I wake you again?" She fiddles with a loose strand of honeyed hair. She hears her father's television in the distance, melded with a bout of giggling and sheets rustling. She thinks she might be sick soon. She blocks the ear unattached to the phone and breathes deeply.

"It's okay," Soul says, and she focuses intently on his voice as if it's her lifeline. "I figured it's important if you're calling me this late."

She exhales long and slow into the chilling silence of her childhood bedroom. "Yeah, it is, actually."

"What's up?" His voice smooths out each time he speaks, and she smiles.

"My father told me today that he's getting remarried." This secret has been clouding her heart the way black tea unravels in clear, warm water: browning it, changing the color, the taste. She's so relieved to dispel it, even if for just this one moment.

"And I'm guessing you're not okay with it?"

"I don't even know how to feel," she admits. The face she had given her father had been blank, devoid of any tangible emotion. She knew it was bound to happen at some point; her father so easily caved to the charms of beautiful women. He always had. That's why mama had left all those years ago. She couldn't blame her mother for parting from her father; the only thing she blamed her mother for was this overbearing feeling of abandonment that blossomed like a reoccurring bruise in her aching soul. She didn't just leave her father, she left her entire family. She left Maka with nothing but her fluttery father, some mediocre cooking skills and a box of bees. No letters, no phone calls. It was like her mother had passed on overnight. Sometimes she thinks that'd be easier to deal with, as sad as it sounded in her head.

With her mother alive somewhere in the world, all she can think is what did she do to be a daughter worth leaving behind?

He's silent on the other end of the line for a while, probably sensing he'd lost her temporarily to her own convoluted thoughts. "Are you going to be in the wedding?"

"I guess I have to be." She clicks her pen over and over.

"When is it?"

"Next August they think. They haven't planned much yet. They need to save money to afford it first so they're stretching it a bit."

"Do you like her?"

"She's okay," Maka says, her voice faltering, "but… she's not my mother, you know?"

"I'll come with you," he says.

"I would love that." She wipes the tears forming on the edges of her eyes and restrains a sniffle. She can feel his pressing worry and she does not want to worsen it. "I can't wait to go back to school. I already need a break from home."

"Same. Only two weeks left." She can hear the smile in his voice now, can picture the serrated ends of his teeth that she's so fascinated by, the alabaster of his silken hair.

 _Two weeks till I get to see you, too,_ she thinks, but the words sit on her tongue. This secret she won't unburden today.

* * *

Their first meeting upon returning is a house-warming party at Liz, Patty and Kid's new apartment. Kid has locked himself in his room until it ends – like a shark roaming the waters for food, he waits for the liberating moment he can take a vacuum and can of Lysol to the living room. Patty and Liz love that they are responsible for no cleaning but the house they rented remains spotless. They could eat off of the floor.

It is a small group, mainly the same people that find themselves at the free parish dinners.

The stress the events of the summer place on Maka make the bowl of alcoholic punch and plate of pot brownies way more appealing than they have ever been. She has a cup in one hand, and a pastry in the other. She feels like she's been turned inside out but nothing can stop her now: she is Maka Albarn, girl wonder.

Tsubaki grabs the third cup from her hand. "I think you should slow down, you know?" She smiles, gentle and full. Maka is blessed for her roommate's friendship; she is like an attentive mother. It's a nice feeling, one she hasn't known for many years. She leans her head on her taller friend's shoulder, reveling in the scent of her citrus shampoo.

"Love you, Tsubaki," she mumbles. She knows her words are slurred but she needs to get them out while she has time, while she still has some trembling consciousness.

Her friend pats her head. "Love you, too, Maka. I'm glad fate made us roommates."

The brownie kicks in way after the liquor, and she moves to sit on the rickety porch swing. She closes her eyes and the world's turning seems to have accelerated. The late-summer breeze is so nice. She imagines rolling into it, floating away like a dandelion seed. She could be worth making a wish on, she thinks.

Soul arrives late with Black Star in tow. His roommate screeches as usual and runs inside to amplify the noise of the group within.

She hears him sit next to her and she jumps. She can feel a string of drool on her mouth but doesn't have the strength to wipe it off. He does. She's thankful, but she also wants to bury herself in the ground at the way he laughs. She looks down, and it looks like her feet are meshing right in with the wood. Her eyes widen, and she reaches out to see if she can still feel her toes.

"Jeez," he says, "what did they _do_ to you?"

She looks to him, and there are stars at the edges of her vision. "This is the plan," she gets out. "This is god's plan."

"You're gonna have a hell of a hangover," he says, still laughing. "You must be so glad you have a week to recover before school starts, huh, bookworm?"

Maka reaches out, cups one side of his face in her hand. His skin is smooth like warm porcelain. She keeps her hand moving, grips his hair with the weakest tug. "So pretty," she mumbles. She has stepped outside of herself. There is no Maka left in her body.

His face reddens. "Oh my god," he says with a sharp intake of breath, "I think it's already time for you to go to bed."

"Come with me?" She tugs his hair again. Her emerald eyes, bloodshot and heavy-lidded, fall to his lips.

He takes her hand and places it back on her lap. "You're freaking me out."

She leans back, and she cannot flick the tears away. They fall like they've been loose for ages, unbridled and unwarranted, down her cheeks. "Sorry. I forgot you're not attracted to me. It's hard. Must be the tiny-tits." She gets up and almost falls, but he is quick and right by her side to catch her. "I'm gonna go to my dorm now, okay, Soul? I'll see you later."

"I'll walk you."

"Nope. I have someone to walk me." She points to her left, where no one stands.

"Don't throw up on me," he says, and she's suddenly scooped up into his arms. She feels like she's floating, and also a little bit like she might puke but she bites it back.

"I can walk," she says, and she punches him with what she thinks is her full force but is really the strength of a child.

"Uhhuh," he mumbles. His voice rumbles in her chest. She leans her head into it. His chest is so reassuring, so tough. She is not okay. She is being her dad right now and she needs to stop. He already confirmed that he has no desire for her. She tries to tell herself that, but she loses all her thoughts to a migraine that forms like an eclipse in her mind.

He walks through unfamiliar halls to a door that is not hers. It is a single dorm room: an RA's room.

"Where are we?" Her voice is leaving her, fading out at the end.

"I registered to be a resident assistant and got my own room." He places her on the bed with a gentleness she hasn't known in some time. It reminds her of Tsubaki. It reminds her of one of the first times she was ever sick, the way he tucks her in like a restless child. He lays on the sheet near her, after dragging over a wastebasket. He tugs one of her pigtails. "So stop by any time you want, okay?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm too attracted to you." She rolls over and stares at the ceiling. "I didn't know you could have a koi pond in here?" She points up.

He grins. "Yeah. You can. Only allowed in the ceiling, though."

"I bet they like being that high up," she says. "Because that's a legend. The strongest koi become dragons. They fly."

"I bet you like being this high, too," he replies.

"Not at all. I'm too honest."

"It's okay. I like it."

She rolls away from him. "No, you don't. You pushed me away." She cannot block the bitterness from opening in her voice.

"Maka, you're completely obliterated. You're not clear-headed. Of course I'm going to push you away."

"That was my decision."

"I believe you."

"But you don't feel the same."

"Maka, are you going to remember any of this tomorrow?"

"I don't think so. The room is going black. I can't see the fish."

He is so close she can feel his breath on her neck. The hair there rises and she grips at the comforter, on edge. "Then I'll tell you something that I can't tell sober you."

She turns to face him, their noses touching. "Why can't you tell sober me?"

"Because you'd hate me, because it's such a… _man_ thought and I know how much you hate that kind of talk."

"Not from you." She grabs his hand. "Because you're Soul and I trust you, anyway."

His cheeks are almost the same shade as his eyes. "I am extremely attracted to you," he whispers, as if any louder and they'll break the bed. "Like, in a completely selfish way. Like, in a I-want-you-all-to-myself sort of way."

"Why?" She is cotton-mouthed. She would love to drink some of the ceiling water, even if it tasted like scales and algae.

"Your legs. Your hair. Your smile. Your laugh. Your whole existence. Everything."

"So eloquent."

"You are words girl. I speak in music."

"So you've… thought about doing terrible things to me?" Her voice is betraying her a lot today. She wants to run, but her hand is on his face again. She wants to get completely lost with him in these sheets. She licks her lips and her chest tightens. This is going to do irreparable damage to the friendship that she holds above all her others but she cannot stop herself.

"I wouldn't call them terrible," he says. His voice is lower, too, but his face remains buried in a potent blush. Her face is heated as well. There is enough tension for her to slice in two. It has been resting between them for so long and suddenly it's here, real, and she's too gone to do anything about it.

"I want you so bad," she says. She's never been this sexual before in her life. She will not be like this in the morning and she's irritated over it.

"If you still feel the same when you wake up, I'll give you all of me."

Her eyes close and her dreams are so vivid and tainted she wants to panic, but these are thoughts she's had for a while and been too scared to feel.

* * *

She forgets everything in the roiling hangover that strikes her in the morning with the sun.

And he remembers it all and can do nothing about it.

"You're sure I didn't do anything weird?" she asks as they stride to their side-by-side classes. "You're being very tight-lipped about what I was like that night and it's making me uneasy."

"I just can't say it, because you won't believe me."

"I always believe you." She tugs on his sleeve as they stand in the hall swarming with students. "Just tell me."

He points behind him. "I'm going to be late for class." He walks backward, out of her grasp with a weakened grin. "Sorry. Gotta go."

"You've never cared about being late before!" she shouts in the midst of the swelling noise.

"New year, new me! Meet up with you for lunch!"

She scoffs. She racks her brain for memories, but it's like they've been locked away. She cannot open them, cannot access them. She remembers, for some reason, how his skin feels beneath her hand and that's it. And that one thought is enough to torture her.

* * *

"I want to show you something," she says. She reaches out and grabs his hand and drags him to the garden beyond the science building.

They walk through a patch of slight-wilting sunflowers to a clearing. Autumn leaves crunch beneath their feet, though it hasn't been cold much yet this October. He kind of wishes the air would catch up to the colors of the trees.

"I couldn't get enough people interested in the club, but the school still let me keep bees here because of their importance," she says as she leads him to two hives sitting on cinderblocks only a few feet from each other.

Her hand in his, which he once found comfortable, has his heart thumping like a turbulent bird trapped beneath his ribs. He tries to keep himself in check because of how thrilled she is to bring him here. "I'm honored to meet them," he says. He slows his breathing, tries to calm his chattering pulse.

"They make music, too. Just stand here and close your eyes. Don't be afraid. They won't even know you're there if you're quiet enough." They stand in the middle of the two hives, and the honeybees swirl around them to reach the nearby wildflowers growing in many different directions.

He closes his eyes and tries to fight the nervousness that has plagued him in her presence since that strange night in the wake of the party. Their flight patterns create a small wind near him, filled with a low humming. The scent of pollen is as thick as the lump in his throat, but he feels calmer.

"This is cool." He grins.

"I know. That's why I had to show you. You can help me harvest the honey, too, if you want." She smiles back at him, and for a moment they are lost in each other's sparkling gazes as waves of bees move around them, like they're not even there at all.

* * *

"Soul," she says as she barges into his room unannounced like always, her arms crossed tight over her jacket, "I need to request a huge favor." She slams the door behind her, as if she is on the run from the police.

"Me too."

"You first."

"Stop just coming into my room. What if I was in the middle of something?"

Her face is blank. "Were you jerking off or something? Oh my god. I'm so sorry. Or are you having a girl over? Is that why you got the single room?"

He puts his face in his hands, his face burning. " _No!_ I'm just generally speaking."

"Soul, if you masturbate it's very normal-"

"Just stop the science talk right now. Please. It freaks me out how you can say things like that without any ounce of embarrassment."

"It's natural. A lot of people do it. I don't know why you get so flustered about sex talk."

He refrains from the urge to scream in frustration. He decides to take a new angle to get her to drop the topic that she loves to freely bring up in front of him, just to make him uncomfortable in his own skin. It amuses her. He rises from his desk chair and stands just an inch from her, their faces almost touching. He puts a hand on either side of her head and leans in so close that he can smell the peppermint chapstick she drenches her lips in the colder months.

"You want to know why I get flustered about sex talk with you?" he asks in the lowest voice possible, internally grinning at the way her face grows red in their proximity.

"W-why?" He is reveling in the way she shrinks, like she would fall right into his arms if he held them out.

"Because you're on my mind when-"

Before he can finish the sentence, her arms drop to her sides and what falls from her winter coat is a real, live cat.

"The favor I need is for you to keep this stray cat here!" she yells over the rest of his sentence. "Her name is Blair and I found her hunting birds near my bees!"

The cat meows at it circles his feet, rubbing her head against his socks. He feels the vibration in her purr.

A cat person, yes. But the birds and the bees he has no knack for.

* * *

Blair is quiet enough as long as she's fed and she can sit comfortably on his windowsill, and he _is_ the resident assistant in this hall, so no one comes to inspect his room. He discovers, from her winded rant about it, that Tsubaki is allergic and that her resident assistant is a _tad_ on the dictator side of the school's rule book and she got written up for a box of expired cheezits but she could not leave this cat out in the chill. Winter is coming on quick. She promises to bring her home to her father's house in the summer. She just needs a home until May.

Soul is attached very fast. He likes that after coming back to his long day of classes, she's sitting there, waiting to greet him. It is a balm on his anxious spirit.

But what he finds he likes more than just coming back to Blair is also opening his door to find her curled up in Maka's arms on his bed, the two of them dozing at ease in his warm room.

He sometimes crawls in with them but other times - like today - he scrawls away at his notes and listens to the peaceful rhythm of the two of them snoring away, as if they have never known another home beyond this room.

* * *

Finals bog Maka down more than usual this semester, he notices. The library remains open till 2 a.m. the week before and during finals. She sucks down tea like it is the only thing keeping her alive and he only sees her for a few minutes each week when she stops by to drop off more food or litter for Blair. The bags around her eyes look more like suitcases, her shoulders stuck in a permanent slouch. His little jabs at her which she usually can take and give back irritate her and she starts to ignore his concerned texts.

He finishes his finals a few days before her, but decides to wait as long as possible to return home for the holidays.

He ventures to the library at midnight, his scarf wrapped tight around his neck to block as much of the December wind as he can. He finds her in a corner of the third floor, ensconced by stacks of psychology and biology books. She is asleep in her textbook, highlighter stains on one side of her face. He cannot believe he has finally seen Maka Albarn at her studying limit. He smiles, but decides not to wake her. This is probably the most sleep she's gotten all month.

He bookmarks the chapter she was on, tucks away all of her belongings, and drapes his jacket over her. Soul picks her up like he did all those months ago - when the night air still smelled sweet and was hung with the sounds of late-summer crickets- and carries her back to his room, placing her beside a very cozy, but still very alert, Blair.

She groans to life after Blair continues to paw at her nose – no claws out as always – and reaches out a sleepy hand to scratch her between her tiny shoulder blades. "Hi, baby," she says with a half-hearted smile. The cat curls up right above Maka's head, kneading the pillow.

His friend peeks out from beneath his comforter, her eyes softened. "Thank you, Soul," she mumbles from beneath the fabric. "Sorry I've been… mean."

"It's okay. I'm mean, too."

"Yeah, but that's your personality, not mine."

He turns to glare, but her eyes are mirthful. He sighs and slides into bed with her, two layers of sweatpants on. He has become expert lately at hiding his overwhelming physical attraction for her. He was already a professional at hiding the emotional attraction, so this was a simpler bump in the road, in a sense. The staying-away tactic doesn't work well with her, he finds. This is the next best thing.

His eyes meet hers beneath the blankets, and her smile is as contagious as always.

He wishes very often that she had remembered everything she had said that night, so he could give in to his selfish whims.

But he stays quiet like always, wrapped up in her warmth and his fumbling thoughts.

* * *

She calls him at 11:55 pm on New Year's Eve. He answers after only one ring.

"Sure you want to enter the new year talking to me?" he says with a laugh.

"Duh. That's why I called you."

"That can't be the only reason you called me."

"I was standing on my porch, enjoying the fine desert night and pretending I lived in my own house instead of being stuck with my father and his fiancé, and I figured you might be doing something similar." He can hear the grin in her voice.

"You are correct," he responds. He leans onto the railing on his own porch, staring out into the bone-chilling night. "I am avoiding my family's annual bash. Though I should check on my brother. Last I saw him he had passed out on the stairwell after the third round of chardonnay."

"He is a super lightweight, huh?"

"Oh, absolutely. And I love every minute of it, because all it does is make mom and dad embarrassed. Especially when he forgets to close the bathroom door."

He loves the tinkling of her laugh through the phone. He is addicted to the sound. Her laughter is swallowed by the party-goers beginning the countdown to the ball drop. After ten seconds, there is a collective, overjoyed screaming.

"Happy New Year, Soul," she says.

"Happy New Year, Maka. See you soon." The selfish thoughts come to him in droves: of kissing Maka at midnight, tasting cheap peppermint instead of caviar. Maybe next year.

* * *

He takes initiative and decides to come to her door on a Thursday night. He wishes he hadn't made that decision.

She answers the door and she has on a light layer of makeup, enough to bring out her eyes more than before – which he didn't think was possible – and her hair curled at the ends, loose and wavy. Her lips are wine-red, like his eyes which are drawn there against his will. She has a lace-sleeved dress on that hugs all of her hidden curves and heels that make her legs stand out more. He wonders if his jaw is hanging loose. He's so pathetic; an unneutered dog, a disgusting primeval man that reconsiders avoiding church. His mind is a dark place right now that he wishes he could break free from.

"Soul? Are you okay? You look like you just got struck by lightning? You're worrying me?" Her voice seems so small.

"Are you…" He chokes on his own words for a moment, his chest heavy. "Are you… going on a date?" _Keep it casual,_ he thinks. _Don't get petty. She can do what she wants._

"No. Going to the club with Liz and Patty, that's all."

"Oh. I see. Well, have fun and be safe." He pats her head once. He turns and almost runs back to his dorm room. He needs to listen to hymns and think about the way Black Star eats the mystery meat in the dining hall because his pants were _not_ this tight ten minutes ago and whyis he _so_ awkward and pathetic? He patted her head when he really wanted to drop to his knees in her luminescent presence and say a prayer beneath her dress. He is being like her old man. He needs to stop. He pets Blair and closes his eyes and focuses on the fact that he just _patted her head_.

"Was he acting bizarre or is it just me?" Maka asks.

Liz gives her a stern look from across her dorm room, where she was attempting to fix Patty's crooked eyeliner. "How oblivious are you?"

She blinks. "What?"

"You are aware that Soul is completely and totally infatuated with you, right? And you answered your door to him in the world's tightest dress and you expect him to act _normal_?"

"Liz, he's not into me. He told me I had small boobs before, remember?"

"That was a defense mechanism and you know it."

"Don't get my hopes up."

"I don't have to. If you walked into his room right now and told him to ravish you he would. Maybe you wouldn't even have to ask."

She sits in her desk chair, examining her dagger-sharp heels. She has a flicker of a memory again from the dreaded housewarming: she remembers his bed and his breath on her neck. She remembers how bad she wanted to pin her lips on his. She hopes she didn't say it. "I need alcohol," she says.

Liz rolls her eyes as Patty chucks a nip to Maka and she swallows it down in under a minute.

She stumbles up to his room some long hour past midnight. Her heels came off long ago, which she wished she hadn't done. The bottoms of her feet are rubbed raw and red from the ice that she stepped over on the sidewalks back to the dorm. February isn't a good time to go out but rules be damned. She's here for answers and she's going to get them.

He opens the door with some reluctance, but she can tell he hasn't fallen asleep yet. His hair is still neat.

She moves past him to sit on his bed. Blair is on the pillow, so deep in her dream that she doesn't stir when the bed creaks. She pats the spot next to her, and Soul obeys, but she can't read the befuddled gaze he throws her. She thinks he might have been drinking, too. It's on his breath, though not as much as hers.

"What?" she says, her voice hoarse.

He points to her neck, where a small, ruddy mark is forming and unfurling like the petal of a rose. She may have given in just a bit before she came to her senses and realized that this stranger from the club was not Soul, but an unfamiliar boy with blazing eyes. She shrugs it off.

"Moment of weakness."

He avoids her stare now. "Did you…?"

"Fuck him? No. I don't operate that way."

He clasps his hands together on his lap. She thinks he looks relieved.

"Soul," she starts, "what did I say to you after that party?"

He falls back onto his bed, and she follows suit. The room spins for her. She hates this feeling. She knows what often comes after a night like this.

"Depends," he says, "how drunk are you?"

"Drunk enough. But I'm getting sober. I had a very long, cold walk back here."

He turns back to her. "You were trying to get me to kiss you that night. You said you were attracted to me."

"And what did you do?"

"Nothing. You were really gone."

"What if I'm less gone now?"

"Depends," he says again, "how good of a kisser was the guy at the club?"

She inches closer. "Don't remember."

"So not very good, I'm guessing." His smile is off-kilter, blurred.

"Probably not even half as good as you will be?" Her question hangs between them, and she hopes he answers the way Liz said he would. If she gets rejected by him, she's not sure what she'll do. She just risked their whole friendship in this weird, buzzing moment. There are sparks in the air, she can feel them. She swears she said the right thing.

Their noses brush as he gets closer. Her heart is pounding so hard she wonders if the bed is vibrating beneath her chest, if he can feel it. She reaches out and puts a hand where his heart is, and his beats just as wildly as hers does. She smiles.

He kisses her, and she knows that this is something she could never forget.


	4. Chapter 4

This is mostly unfamiliar territory for him in the weeks that follow the charged kiss. He doesn't want to break her very steep relationship boundaries, but doesn't want to lose her, either. They go about their days the way they did before, but with more hand-holding, sometimes a kiss or two. Each one lasts a little bit longer than the other, but they never go much further than that. He just wants to be around her as often as he can be without being too much. He steals a graze of her thigh every so often, a trip down her neck when he can. Her music drives him wild, and he wants to go so much further but he cannot.

She's like glass. Relationships make her nervous because of her father, because of the way her mother disappeared from her life. He doesn't know what would make her happy, but he's too afraid to ask. They stand on some middle ground and that's where it stops: right in the gray, right in-between nothing and something.

He finds her by her bees on the last day of finals in May. Blair is mewling in a crate beside her, scratching at the door.

He approaches her from behind, grabs a pigtail and gives it a weak tug. "Maka?"

"Mmm?" She stands up and greets him with a suffocating hug. "I'm going to miss you this summer."

"More than last summer?"

"Definitely."

"Why is that?"

She pulls back, then leans forward and gives him a kiss so full of longing he thinks he might fall apart right then and there.

"But," she says after it ends, "I'm living with Liz, Kid and Patty at the end of July until school starts again. I picked up some part-time work nearby. So… if you can spare a visit, feel free."

"I will as often as I can."

* * *

"You know," she says one night as they lay on the Liz's couch after a long movie night, "I still have that jar of ocean water from our project. I always put it on the window of my dorm room. My window at home, too. I always bring it with me."

"Does the water still look okay?" He plays with the ends of her hair, twirling strands between his fingers like silk.

"Better than a fresh water sample would look, thanks to the salt. It just looks really nice in the moonlight, I've noticed. It comforts me. Like… a lava lamp or something." She smiles against the skin of his chest. "I just like excuses to think of you, I think."

"We need excuses to think of each other? I've been doing it wrong, then." He laughs as she nudges him.

"You're too nice," she mumbles. "I'm suspicious."

"I can be awful, too," he says, and bravely he kisses her till their lips are sore and they drift off into a calm sleep.

* * *

He loves when he catches her after class in her favorite lab. She ordered a lab coat two sizes too large and it swallows up her ballerina figure as she leans into the near-fossilized microscope. Her lab goggles are off to the side, a large crack through the middle of them. He thinks maybe for Christmas he'll buy her new ones; though she's strangely attached to the ones she has, as if it's a family heirloom.

He approaches her with reverence so he doesn't startle her as he tends to do. He tugs an end of her hair, which falls in loose waves almost to the center of her back. He thinks she's growing it out because he mentioned once that he likes it long and it makes him smile.

Maka leans into him and closes her eyes. "I'm so tired," she says. "I've been trying to figure out which blood sample has lyme disease for the past hour."

"That sounds like lots of fun. Just guess one and let's go get dinner. I'm starving."

"You just ate like an hour ago with Black Star, didn't you?" Her emerald stare is intent on him.

He grins, sheepish. "I only had two tacos."

"I want Italian."

"You always want Italian."

"You always want tacos!" She almost falls out of her chair.

"Speaking of Italian," he says with some reluctance, "would you possibly want to be with at my family's New Year's bash this year? My parents will pay for your ticket. They _wanted_ to, actually, since they were so thrilled I… have a girlfriend." His face is a deep burgundy.

"Is that what I am?" She grins.

"I mean… if you want to be?"

She pulls him down for a kiss. "I already thought I was."

He rolls his eyes. "So arrogant."

"And you love it."

"Absolutely."

His gaze drifts to the window where a slow-crawl snow begins. He's so blessed to have the warmth of her presence in this mostly steel-plated room. There is a whir of a machine he's never seen before in the distance, the clack of Maka changing samples again. He worries, for a heartbeat, if these moments will be permanent. Not much in his life is.

She jots a few more notes and then turns to him with a glittering smile.

Even if she moves on he thinks as he returns the smile, these are pieces of his life that he will always carry in his heart, just like jars of saltwater.

He keeps her as close as possible while they walk back to their dorm in the midst of the growing storm, as if she might get swept away by the winds.

They hole up in his room to wait out the blizzard. Even after a long walk which coated them both in snow, he can still smell a bit of a desert breeze on her hair as she falls asleep in his arms.

He wonders what she considers to be home.

* * *

Her father sobs relentlessly after she tells him over dinner on Christmas Eve that she'll be spending the remainder of her break with her boyfriend in New York City. His fiancé tries his best to subdue him, but he cannot be tamed. She supposes part of it is her never having serious relationships in high school. She wonders if he thought she'd be single her entire life and grimaces at the thought. Her father puts on her a pedestal only when it conveniences him.

"Maka! You're going to share a hotel room with him? You're not even married! That's taboo!" he blubbers over his small plate of the ham that she baked.

"You weren't married when mama got pregnant," she retorts.

"Exactly! That's why I'm worried! Let me meet this boy before I decide if you can stay there or not."

She slams her fork down. "I am not my mother and I am not you! I'm me, and I won't make the mistakes the two of you did. I'm smarter than that, which is why I never let you make any decisions for me, including this one." She worked for hours on their holiday dinner, but dumps the rest of hers in the trash and slams her way upstairs to her bedroom where her suitcase rests, packed already for the long trip ahead.

She sighs as she looks at one of the pictures on her nightstand: her and her father at the daddy-daughter dance in seventh grade. She looks like the happiest person in the world in the photo, but all Maka can think about it is how he disappeared to entertain a single mother just twenty minutes later. The office had to call her mother to pick her up after being left behind. That fight between her parents was one of the last.

Being abandoned at a school dance was so much easier than the way her mother left.

* * *

Maka rises early in the morning, and opts for the cab to the airport instead of the lift her father promised her.

"I'm terrified for the first time in my life," she says as they approach the front door of his parent's mansion just outside of the bustling city. She tightens her grip on the bowl of white chocolate popcorn she made as if afraid it'll fall from her grasp. She wonders if they even need her bland dessert with the spread they have somewhere in the middle of this enormous place that Soul calls _home._ It doesn't go well with lobster or Riesling, both of which have to be on their menu. She wants to turn and run, but he reaches out and grabs one of her hands and she's locked in place beside him as they ring the doorbell.

She takes a deep breath. She knows he's nervous, too. They huddle close in the cold as they hear footsteps.

His mother opens the door, as glamorous as she expected the matron Evans to be: two pearl strings and a black dress that was probably a Tom Ford ballgown in its day. Her hair is long and a blonde as light as sand and sparkles like diamonds in the dim lighting of the hallway. She considers shading her eyes when the woman smiles with immaculate teeth.

"You must be Maka!" she says. She steps forward and pulls her in for a smothering hug, then backs up and pinches one of her cheeks. "So precious! I can't believe my youngest managed to get such a beautiful girl." She pats her son's head.

"Ma, seriously," he groans.

"It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. Evans. I brought some, um, chocolate popcorn." Maka holds out the bowl, hesitant.

"Just call me Maron." She takes the bowl and places it on the nearby table. "Now, come upstairs with me. I have a dress lined up for you."

"How did you get her size?" Soul throws her a sideways glance.

"Wes found her on facebook and my designer did an estimation. He's magically talented. Now, go find your brother before he gets into the champagne, would you?" She drags her up the red-carpeted stairs and into the oblivion of the next wing.

His brother is slouched at the kitchen island, staring with a great intensity at his phone while he takes a swig straight from an open bottle of wine.

"Starting early, Wes?" Soul asks as he drops into the seat next to his older brother.

"I never stopped, actually," he says with a wicked grin. His younger brother sees an ache at the edge of his eyes and shakes his head. Wes fills another glass and slides it over. "Join me. I'm tired of drinking alone in the quiet of this house."

"Where's dad?"

"In bed."

"On their favorite party of the year? That's weird."

His brother looks at him and he looks very suddenly like he's aged ten years since Soul has last seen him. It makes his stomach roil. "Wes?" he asks.

"Mom is trying to keep it from you for some strange reason, but I won't. Dad is sick. Terminally sick, Soul. Cancer. Bad cancer. Actually, I think mom is keeping it from you because she's trying to pretend it's not even real at this point. She avoids talk of it at all costs. She's behaving differently, in case you haven't already noticed. There's just this big, fake smile plastered to her face all the time like if she just keeps doing that she can pretend it's not going on. It makes me want to sink into the ground. I've gone through almost all of the wine in this house since I've been home, but it's not working. Nothing is working for either of us. Any of us. Dad is refusing any sort of treatment. Says he wants to reserve all their money for mom and our grandchildren instead of him." He exhales the way he used to smoke his cigarettes in the backyard when he thought their parents weren't watching: long, battered and slow. Soul wraps his mind around it at a very tired pace. His whole body feels tired. His spirit.

"You should talk to him," Wes says.

"He doesn't like talking to me," he replies. Soul thinks of their fight last New Year's, which ended with the usual slamming of doors and biting silence. He wonders if his father was sick then.

"Dad loves you whether he acts like it or not. I'm not even saying forgive him for the way he's treated you – you don't have to – but at least let him see you. He has maybe six months, Soul. He was devastated because, and I quote, 'I won't even get to see my son graduate.' He meant you."

"Pour me more wine and I'll consider it."

Wes hands him the bottle.

* * *

After two more glasses, Soul heads up the stairs, languid and aching. Halfway down the hall, he sees Maka donning the dress his mother forced her into: a green gown that flows far past her feet, like the leaves of a drooping flower. It brings out the viridian in his girlfriend's eyes and he pushes a smile despite the raging storm brewing in his chest like a toxin. She is so beautiful that he's afraid to touch her now more than ever, like she might come undone.

She smiles. Her mother dusted her with some light makeup and it highlights the smattering of freckles across her cheeks. He resists the urge to cup her head in his hands.

She twirls once just a few feet from him. "How do I look? Like a Disney princess?" She laughs.

"You always do, anyway."

"Are you okay? You seem… off." She reaches out, but he avoids her grasp.

"Yeah. Just need to talk to my dad. I'll be down in a minute." He wonders if she can see the parts of his heart that have caved in, the bruises and the marks.

"Okay," she says. She slides past him.

He doesn't bother to knock. He opens the door and steps in. There are no machines beeping in the backdrop, no nurses fluttering to and fro like he expected. There is just his father wrapped up in his enormous comforter in the darkness of the room.

"Hello?" his father says. His voice is as heavy as Soul's feet feel as he makes his way to his mother's vanity. He sounds like he's lost all his color, his vitality. It came on so quick that Soul can understand why his mother might pretend it's not even real.

He sits in his mother's chair and meets his gaze. "Hi, dad. Did I wake you?"

"I don't sleep much, anyway. Your mother is in and out constantly."

"She doesn't know what to do with herself." _And honestly, I don't, either._

"She always thought she'd be the one getting sick. I'm glad it's me, though. Your mother could live without me, but I don't think I'd do very well without her."

"Dad?"

"She's an amazing mother, Soul. I hope they way I've treated you never gets in the way of your love for her. I didn't deserve her love, either, but she always gives it to me unconditionally."

"Yeah." He swallows a large lump. He's lost his breath, his words. This is too much. This room has always seemed so big to him until now. Now, he wants to leave. His leg jitters. There are tears forming and he fights the urge to wipe them away. His father is shrinking before his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Soul."

"I've decided to become a piano teacher," he blurts. He doesn't want apologies. He remembers the first time his father sat him at a piano. He was three years old. The floor in the music room then was black-and-white checkered. His mother changed it every few years or so, but he remembers what it looked like that day. The keys felt familiar under his small hands as his father guided him, told him every note and the weight it carried. They had bad days and good days. Mostly bad days, he would admit. But he would focus – now more than ever – on the good. That's what they needed.

"I'm really happy to hear that. I thought you'd given up on piano after what I did." His father does look happy, and it eats at Soul just a bit.

"No. I've found a lot of inspiration these past few years."

"Your mother was my muse, too."

He scratches the back of his neck, embarrassed.

"I'm glad you haven't lost it, Soul."

"You gave it to me to begin with, anyway."

"You're actually somehow the most sensible person in this house, you know. Look after your mother and brother, please. They'll probably need it. Wes the most."

He sees a lot of his brother in his father. "I will."

* * *

They run from his house in the cold back to their hotel, holding hands. Her heels clack on the iced sidewalk and she's surprised she doesn't slip. They dash through the seemingly endless halls to their room at the end of the wing on the sixth floor. The snow starts while they catch their breath in the warm quiet of the hotel.

She leans against the door as he spreads out on the bed.

"Soul," she says, "what's going on? You're hiding something."

"I'm not." He doesn't meet her gaze.

"I know you well enough by now to know that you're hiding something." She removes her heels, one by one.

"Convince me to talk, then. You're good at that." He rolls over on the bed. His eyes are red-rimmed.

The taste of his midnight kiss still rests on her lips, cracked from the cold. "I am." She unzips her dress as far as she can, then allows it to slide off in one fluid motion with all the ease of a second skin. She revels in the way his stare widens.

"Maka?" His voice breaks.

"Come here. Let me get you to talk."

"The last thing I want to do with you right now is talk."

"Then we'll save that for after."

He approaches her slowly.

"Am I… okay?" she says when he's just a few inches away. She covers herself as much as she can. This vulnerability is new.

He pulls her hands away, gentle and precarious. "Perfect." He kisses her.

* * *

She wakes up first, like always. But for now, she leaves him to sleep. She observes how long his eyelashes are, the way he sleeps so much easier with her nearby. She wants to wake up like this every morning from now on, but she shoves the selfish thoughts somewhere out of reach. She runs a finger along what looks like a very long, antiquated scar that starts at one of his broad shoulders. He stirs at her inquisitive touch.

He turns to her and smiles. "Hey." His voice is lathered with morning laziness and late-night wine.

"What's this from?" she asks.

"Motorcycle accident. Wes and I had a lot of rebel phases as teenagers. We were really good at working our parents' last nerves." There is a strange glint to his eyes, and she holds in a breath as the next question leaves her.

"Soul, what was going on with you last night? I think I did an okay job of convincing you enough to talk?"

"I don't think I'm ready to discuss it yet. It doesn't even seem real yet. I feel like it'll never seem real to me." His gaze is blank, less affectionate than before. He's cutting her off. She tries to hold back her bit of irritation.

"You should talk to someone about it if you can. Doesn't even have to be me."

"I'll talk about it when I'm ready."

"Okay. I'm just saying."

"Just saying what?"

"Stop being so defensive! I'm just saying if you need help, get it."

"Who says it's even about me?"

"Whatever," she says. "Push me away then, someone who is trying to reach out to you." She turns away, untangles from his hold.

"If you're that easy to push away, then why are you here at all?" There is a weirdness to his voice, like he's not convinced of his own words. She can hear the wavering, but she still rises from the bed. He's angry, but in a way she's never seen. In a way she can't deal with in this moment, a moment that is supposed to be calming and secure.

"You tell me, Soul." She dresses in a matter of minutes and is out the door before he can answer.

* * *

The semester starts faster than she was prepared for. She avoids him in small ways: uses a different lab each day after class, blocks his number in an inexplicable rage, and hides out at Liz and Patty's instead of her dorm room. The sad part is, she's not even sure he's looking for her. She's adjusted to being left behind and tries to shrug it off, but this is the loss of someone she considered her best friend and she finds her days on campus much emptier and longer than before.

She cannot wait for the warmth of spring. The ashen clouds that have become a permanent winter fixture in the sky make the hardening of her heart worse. She considers hibernation as another avoidance option, but remembers that this semester involves student teaching.

She wonders what classes Soul ended up picking. He always does it last minute and gets stuck in some rough classes. Then she tells herself that it's no longer her job to care about him, even if it goes against her nature.

She sees him for the first time at one of Liz and Patty's after-blizzard parties in late February. She wants to crawl out of her skin and embrace him all at once, but she does neither. She circumvents him, acts like he's a ghost. She wraps herself up in distracting conversations, makes sure to laugh every so often – loud enough that he can hear her from across the room.

She steals a glance at him when she has a second and their eyes meet. No words are exchanged.

She's exhausted.

The gap in this room is so small, but it suddenly feels like miles.


	5. Chapter 5

He lets her stuff stay in his room. It doesn't fill the void her enlightening presence left in its wake, but it's better than nothing, he supposes. He'll box it up at the end of the semester when he musters the strength to hide it away in a taped cardboard box somewhere. He wonders what label to give it.

She left her Christmas gift here: one of those updated instant cameras she begged him for. It's a powder blue, not a single scratch on it. She takes such great care of the things she owns. The pictures of the two of them that she snapped sit beside it in a neat row. She kept the one she took of he and Blair sleeping. He hopes, for some reason, that she still has it. That she thinks of him from time to time as the weeks of silence pass between them.

He lets her awful country CD run in his car in moments of weakness. He can imagine her laughing at the thought of him willingly listening to Sam Hunt, but the lyrics he cringed at before suddenly apply to him and it makes him tired, anxious.

He heats some water and pours it over a bag of one of her old boxes of earl gray tea. He mixes some of the honey she gave him from her own bees into it, watches it drip from the spoon like melted amber into the dark swirl beneath.

* * *

The next time they meet is Saint Patrick's Day. They used to stay in on this day to avoid the drunken masses. This year, they both end up at Liz's biggest party yet.

Kid has corned beef hash in a slow cooker somewhere off to the right, but has long escaped to his domain. They have some spiked green sherbet in an enormous glass bowl, and green streamers hanging from the ceiling in a variety of patterns. They brought the jacuzzi in the backyard to life now that some of the winter winds have traveled north.

Maka doesn't recognize many of the students here this time, so she stays beside Patty and sips slowly at the weird concoction. She isn't sure what kind of alcohol is in it, but she doesn't find it in her to care.

Soul arrives late as always with Black Star and Tsubaki not too far behind him. Soul has a bowl of mashed potatoes in his arms, which she assumes her roommate made. She meets his sanguine gaze as she often does but this time, she holds it as long as she can, as if daring him to break contact first. He doesn't look away, even as he places the bowl down beside the crock pot and almost falls over when Black Star laughs at something and nudges him.

Her heart grows heavy, watered down. She looks away as Liz whistles to get the attention of some of the students from the coffee table. She's glad Kid isn't here to see the blatant disregard she has for his new polish.

"Everyone who is interested in my version of spin the bottle please head over this way!" she shouts. A few trickle in her direction, but a majority of the people here are already too distracted to join the game.

Maka shrugs and follows Liz to a small circle of students on the carpet by the glass porch doors. She cannot hide the widening of her eyes as Soul helps himself to a vacant spot not too far from her. She focuses on the foam pattern in her red solo cup.

Her friend spins the used Heineken bottle and it points to her. She sighs, and takes a quick glance around the circle. She doesn't feel particularly attracted to any of them beside Soul, much to her dismay. It's her own fault for entering, she supposes.

She has a notion that Liz has planned for all of this when she spins it once more and it points right to him: all round red eyes and sideswept alabaster hair.

 _It's only three minutes,_ she thinks. _You can handle him for three more minutes of your life._

Liz has a wicked grin. "Now, let me just remind the two of you that this is _my_ version of spin the bottle."

"Which means what?" Maka asks, placing down her drink.

"Five minutes in the jacuzzi," she says, "in the nude."

"Due to extenuating circumstances I don't think-"

"I'll do it," Soul cuts in, his gaze intent on Maka. "If she does it, I'll do it."

He knows she cannot back down from a dare. She's too brave. Brave about the things that keep her pride in check, especially. She wants to cry and shout and punch the wall at once. She gets up, a new fire in her eyes.

"Fine. I'll do it too," she says, teeth gritted.

She stays, for the first minute, on the opposite side from him. She has to admit that the pressure feels good against her bare skin, even more so when the few breezes that slide above them are coated in a early-spring chill. She sneaks one glance at his scar, then looks over his shoulder and at the weathered fence beyond.

"Maka," he says after a long while, "we need to talk at some point."

"I was waiting for you to start," she says, her mouth near the bubbling water. She can feel her skin pruning already. "I know how fragile you are."

"You're really starting a fight?"

"You started the original one, didn't you?" she retorts, her eyes sharp.

He sinks further into the water. "Yeah. I did."

She waits.

"I miss you," he continues.

She sighs. "I'm sorry, Soul."

"I should be saying that."

"It was both of us, I think."

There is a long silence that follows, just the rumbling of the hot water around them. She dares to meet his gaze at last. His eyes are weighed down with tender, aching skin. She doesn't reach out to him. Not yet. But she slides just an inch closer.

"Yeah," he says as she makes her way over, "it was."

"But you have to admit," she says, "sometimes you look for excuses to be miserable."

"You do, too." One of his arms is outstretched toward her, like always. Always ready to catch her when she stumbles, even though she remains the strongest between the two of them.

"That's why I can say that," she whispers.

She knows there isn't much time left. Liz will rip open the sliding door and this moment will crumble like old paper, right into dust in their hands.

"Friends?" he asks as she sidles up next to him.

"I don't think I can do that," she replies.

His breath is labored. "Why not?"

"I preferred the way we were before." Her lips are so close to his.

The door slides open. "Time's up!" Liz yells.

They both turn to look at her, faces heated.

"Wow," she says, "if five minutes and no clothes was all the two of you needed to make up I would've told you to get naked a long time ago."

"Just throw us the clothes, Liz, please." She reaches for his hand in the water, and revels in the feel of it.

* * *

"There's something I've been hoping to show you," he says as they get dressed in the morning a few weeks later. He's glad he long shed the winter coats and smothering scarves. He loves the low-hanging humidity in the air as they stroll toward the fields of the science building. "I decided to take a wildlife conservation class, and my final project is going really well."

She leaves her hair down, and he smiles at the way it curls in the warmth. She follows him without a single word.

They reach the other side of the clearing, where two more hives sit on cinderblocks. They are smaller than the ones she's been raising, but humming with a brilliant life. She sits with him in the grass just a few feet away.

"I've been trying to think of ways to get people more interested in raising bees," he says. "So I thought, what do people _like_ about bees? The honey."

She nods with a befuddled smile.

"And I've been trying to get over my fear of performing. So, I combined them for my project. I've kept your jar of honey. I've been playing for my bees but not for yours, since I figured your bees wouldn't have very good musical taste." He squeezes her shoulder and she shoves his hand off with a glare.

"Anyway," he continues with a grin, "take a sample of your own honey, and then mine."

She takes a spoon and dips it into her own jar, then his. She smiles when she tastes the jar he harvested. "It's so much sweeter."

"I got a lot of my fellow music majors to help. We've been selling the honey. Start that club again next year, and you'll have a full room of potential beekeepers, guaranteed."

"Soul," she says, and he grimaces at the tears that form in her evergreen eyes, "this is amazing. Thank you." She leans forward and hugs him.

"No, thank you," he mumbles into her hair. "Now I can play again."

She backs away, places a hand on one side of his face. "Good. The world needs to hear what you're capable of."

"That's what my father says."

* * *

They leave the window to his room open on the late-spring nights. Her eyes are closed, but he can tell she isn't asleep yet from the way her chest rises and falls, too rapid, too short of breath. He stares while he has the chance to, observes her honeyed eyelashes and the bridge of her nose, dusted in sun-fading freckles. He admires the strength he sees in her shoulders, which he's leaned on more than once.

"Maka," he whispers, "I'm ready to talk to you."

Her eyes are open in an instant but she says nothing, just meets his leaden gaze in the dim starlight that falls in silver fragments in his room.

He grabs her hand under the sheet, and grips it. "My father is very sick," he says.

The word 'sorry' sits on her tongue but he stops her. "I don't want apologies," he continues, "I just need you with me."

"You don't even need to ask me to do that, Soul. I'm here."

He lays on her shoulder, breathes in the scent of something faint like cactus and something strong like late-night tea and wildflower.

* * *

The plane ride feels so long to him, but she smiles at him as they fly over sand-coated cities to reach her small town in Nevada and he smiles back, just like always.

"You nervous?" she asks as the plane starts its descent.

"No," he says. "I have no reason to be. You're here. Are you?"

"I'm my father's… best woman, so I guess I can't act like I am. I have to give a speech at the rehearsal dinner, though. That I'm a little nervous about." She wrote it on the ride here.

"Can I read it?"

She hands it over. Her writing is chicken-scratch, but he's well-adjusted at this point.

 _I love my father. Let me start by saying that, because I don't believe I've told him that enough. I love you, papa, even on your worst days, because you love me even on mine and for that I'll always be grateful…_

They wave off her father and his new wife as they get in the limo to head back to the airport. They have the house all to themselves, which Maka was sure not to directly mention to her father for fear he'd turn the car around and observe them for the rest of summer break.

"You think it'll work out?" Soul asks as they head into her home.

"I think he'll do his best, like always. We'll see. He does really love her, I think. And she definitely loves him. I can see it." She smiles as they make their tired way up the aging stairs to her bedroom.

"You can see that sort of stuff?" He sticks his hand in his pockets.

"Sometimes." She shrugs.

They face each other in the hall. "So what do you see when you look at me?" His eyes stay on hers.

"A lot, actually. But what do you _want_ me to see?" She smiles.

"Love," he says after a pensive moment, "because that's what I feel when I look at you."

"And you say you're not a words person." She leans on the wall behind her. "I love you, too."

"You think we'll work out?" he says as he moves forward in her direction.

"Without a doubt," she says. She lets her dress fall to the floor once again, and he smiles.

He loves how night sounds in her room here: nightingales, sand being dragged by strong winds in the distance, and the way she whispers goodnight.


End file.
